Brokenhearted

Our little kitty, Jewel, went missing on Friday. The kids and I were out of town. Dennis was here but was working and on-call so he wasnt' really around. She went out Friday morning and didn't come back home. We checked with neighbors, roamed the back woods, called every possible place someone could have possibly taken her if they found her and did lots of finger crossing hoping that she'd find her way home. Well, today I got a call from our neighbor across the street telling me that she found Jewel's body. The crazy thing is that it appeared that nothing was wrong with her. She didn't have any broken bones or blood or signs of rough play. We can only assume that she got into something that she wasn't supposed to get into. My neighbor, who I didn't really get to know before today, was such a sweet man. He cried with me and offered to get her ready for a burial. We're all so sad at our house and trying to answer all of those hard questions that kids ask and that parents pretend to know the answers to: where do you go when you die?, what's a soul? what happens to the body? why do we bury her? Is she with Trouble (my parent's cat who recently passed away) now? And then there are the lighter questions: can we get a dog now? and when can we get another cat?
It rained all day today. Hopefully, the weather will be drier tomorrow so we can say our final good-byes. Jewel was a great cat. I've never met a cat so gentle and cuddly and patient with the kids. We're really going to miss her.